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Whence the Force of F = ma?
What is this?
II: Rationalizations
Also This
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Frank Wilczek Month
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The Hydrogen
Place an ad In my previous column Economy
Buyers' guide (Physics Today, October Transforming the
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2004, page 11), I discussed Electric
how assumptions about F and Infrastructure
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m give substance to the spirit The German
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of F = ma. I called this set of Under National
American Institute of assumptions the culture of Socialism
Physics force. I mentioned that
The Industrial Physicist several elements of the
Computing in Science & culture, though often
Engineering presented as "laws," appear
Journals rather strange from the
Virtual Journals perspective of modern
physics. Here I discuss how,
and under what
circumstances, some of those
assumptions emerge as
Wilczek
consequences of modern
fundamentals—or don't!

Critique of the zeroth law

Ironically, it is the most primitive element of the culture of

force—the zeroth law, conservation of mass—that bears the
subtlest relationship to modern fundamentals.

Is the conservation of mass as used in classical mechanics a

consequence of the conservation of energy in special
relativity? Superficially, the case might appear
straightforward. In special relativity we learn that the mass of
a body is its energy at rest divided by the speed of light
squared (m = E/c2 ); and for slowly moving bodies, it is
approximately that. Since energy is a conserved quantity, this
equation appears to supply an adequate candidate, E/c2 , to
fill the role of mass in the culture of force.

That reasoning won't withstand scrutiny, however. The gap in

its logic becomes evident when we consider how we routinely
treat reactions or decays involving elementary particles.

To determine the possible motions, we must explicitly specify

the mass of each particle coming in and of each particle going
out. Mass is a property of isolated particles, whose masses are
intrinsic properties—that is, all protons have one mass, all
electrons have another, and so on. (For experts: "Mass" labels
irreducible representations of the Poincaré group.) There is no
separate principle of mass conservation. Rather, the energies
and momenta of such particles are given in terms of their
masses and velocities, by well−known formulas, and we
constrain the motion by imposing conservation of energy and
momentum. In general, it is simply not true that the sum of
the masses of what goes in is the same as the sum of the Spectra Stable
masses of what goes out. Isotopes
Spectra Stable
Of course when everything is slowly moving, then mass does Isotopes is a leading
reduce to approximately E/c2 . It might therefore appear as if producer of high
quality, stable isotope
the problem, that mass as such is not conserved, can be swept biochemicals.
under the rug, for only inconspicuous (small and slowly spectrastableisotopes
moving) bulges betray it. The trouble is that as we develop
mechanics, we want to focus on those bulges. That is, we want
to use conservation of energy again, subtracting off the Union of Concerned
mass−energy exactly (or rather, in practice, ignoring it) and Scientists
SecurityNet
keeping only the kinetic part E − mc 2 ≅ 1/2 mv 2 . But you can't Receive timely
squeeze two conservation laws (for mass and nonrelativistic information on U.S.
energy) out of one (for relativistic energy) honestly. Ascribing nuclear weapons,
space weapons, missile
conservation of mass to its approximate equality with E/c2 defense, and
begs an essential question: Why, in a wide variety of nonproliferation
circumstances, is mass−energy accurately walled off, and not policies
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convertible into other forms of energy?

To illustrate the problem concretely and numerically, consider Sponsored links

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course, but there is no useful way to divide it up into two
pieces that are separately conserved. In thought experiments,
by adjusting the masses, we could make this problem appear
in situations where the motion is arbitrarily slow. Another
way to keep the motion slow is to allow the liberated
mass−energy to be shared among many bodies.

Recovering the zeroth law

Thus, by licensing the conversion of mass into energy, special

relativity nullifies the zeroth law, in principle. Why is Nature
so circumspect about exploiting this freedom? How did
Antoine Lavoisier, in the historic experiments that helped
launch modern chemistry, manage to reinforce a central
principle (conservation of mass) that isn't really true?

Proper justification of the zeroth law requires appeal to

specific, profound facts about matter.

To explain why most of the energy of ordinary matter is

accurately locked up as mass, we must first appeal to some
basic properties of nuclei, where almost all the mass resides.
The crucial properties of nuclei are persistence and dynamical
isolation. The persistence of individual nuclei is a consequence
of baryon number and electric charge conservation, and the
properties of nuclear forces, which result in a spectrum of
quasi−stable isotopes. The physical separation of nuclei and
their mutual electrostatic repulsion—Coulomb barriers—
guarantee their approximate dynamical isolation. That
approximate dynamical isolation is rendered completely
effective by the substantial energy gaps between the ground
state of a nucleus and its excited states. Since the internal
energy of a nucleus cannot change by a little bit, then in
response to small perturbations, it doesn't change at all.

Because the overwhelming bulk of the mass−energy of

ordinary matter is concentrated in nuclei, the isolation and
integrity of nuclei—their persistence and lack of effective
internal structure—go most of the way toward justifying the
zeroth law. But note that to get this far, we needed to appeal
to quantum theory and special aspects of nuclear
phenomenology! For it is quantum theory that makes the
concept of energy gaps available, and it is only particular
aspects of nuclear forces that insure substantial gaps above
the ground state. If it were possible for nuclei to be very much
larger and less structured—like blobs of liquid or gas—the
gaps would be small, and the mass−energy would not be
locked up so completely.

Radioactivity is an exception to nuclear integrity, and more

generally the assumption of dynamical isolation goes out the
window in extreme conditions, such as we study in nuclear
and particle physics. In those circumstances, conservation of
mass simply fails. In the common decay π 0 → γγ, for example,
a massive π 0 particle evolves into photons of zero mass.

The mass of an individual electron is a universal constant, as

is its charge.Electrons do not support internal excitations, and
the number of electrons is conserved (if we ignore weak
interactions and pair creation). These facts are ultimately
rooted in quantum field theory. Together, they guarantee the
integrity of electron mass−energy.

In assembling ordinary matter from nuclei and electrons,

electrostatics plays the dominant role. We learn in quantum
theory that the active, outer−shell electrons move with
velocities of order αc = e 2 /4πħ ≈ .007 c. This indicates that
the energies in play in chemistry are of order m e (αc)2 /m e c2
= α 2 ≈ 5 × 10 −5 times the electron mass−energy, which in turn
is a small fraction of the nuclear mass−energy. So chemical
reactions change the mass−energy only at the level of parts
per billion, and Lavoisier rules!

Note that inner−shell electrons of heavy elements, with

velocities of order Zα, can be relativistic. But the inner core of
a heavy atom—nucleus plus inner electron shells—ordinarily
retains its integrity, because it is spatially isolated and has a
large energy gap. So the mass−energy of the core is conserved,
though it is not accurately equal to the sum of the
mass−energy of its component electrons and nucleus.

Putting it all together, we justify Isaac Newton's zeroth law for

ordinary matter by means of the integrity of nuclei, electrons,
and heavy atom cores, together with the slowness of the
motion of these building blocks. The principles of quantum
theory, leading to large energy gaps, underlie the integrity; the
smallness of α, the fine−structure constant, underlies the slow
motion.

Newton defined mass as "quantity of matter," and assumed it

to be conserved. The connotation of his phrase, which
underlies his assumption, is that the building blocks of matter
are rearranged, but neither created nor destroyed, in physical
processes; and that the mass of a body is the sum of the
masses of its building blocks. We've now seen, from the
perspective of modern foundations, why ordinarily these
assumptions form an excellent approximation, if we take the
building blocks to be nuclei, heavy atom cores, and electrons.

It would be wrong to leave the story there, however. For with

our next steps in analyzing matter, we depart from this
familiar ground: first off a cliff, then into glorious flight. If we
try to use more basic building blocks (protons and neutrons)
instead of nuclei, then we discover that the masses don't add
accurately. If we go further, to the level of quarks and gluons,
we can largely derive the mass of nuclei from pure energy, as
I've discussed in earlier columns.

Mass and gravity

On the face of it, this complex and approximate justification of

the mass concept used in classical mechanics poses a paradox:
How does this rickety construct manage to support stunningly
precise and successful predictions in celestial mechanics? The
answer is that it is bypassed. The forces of celestial mechanics
are gravitational, and so proportional to mass, and m cancels
from the two sides of F = ma. This cancellation in the
equation for motion in response to gravity becomes a
foundational principle in general relativity, where the path is
identified as a geodesic in curved spacetime, with no mention
of mass.

In contrast to a particle's response to gravity, the gravitational

influence that the particle exerts is only approximately
proportional to its mass; the rigorous version of Einstein's
field equation relates spacetime curvature to
energy−momentum density. As far as gravity is concerned,
there is no separate measure of quantity of matter apart from
energy; that the energy of ordinary matter is dominated by
mass−energy is immaterial.

The third and fourth laws

The third and fourth laws are approximate versions of

conservation of momentum and conservation of angular
momentum, respectively. (Recall that the fourth law stated
that all forces are two−body central forces.) In the modern
foundations of physics these great conservation laws reflect
the symmetry of physical laws under translation and rotation
symmetry. Since these conservation laws are more accurate
and profound than the assumptions about forces commonly
used to "derive" them, those assumptions have truly become
anachronisms. I believe that they should, with due honors, be
retired.

Newton argued for his third law by observing that a system

with unbalanced internal forces would begin to accelerate
spontaneously, "which is never observed." But this argument
really motivates the conservation of momentum directly.
Similarly, one can "derive" conservation of angular
momentum from the observation that bodies don't spin up
spontaneously. Of course, as a matter of pedagogy, one would
point out that action−reaction systems and two−body central
forces provide especially simple ways to satisfy the
conservation laws.

Tacit simplicities

Some tacit assumptions about the simplicity of F are so deeply

embedded that we easily take them for granted. But they have
profound roots.

In calculating the force, we take into account only nearby

bodies. Why can we get away with that? Locality in quantum
field theory, which deeply embodies basic requirements of
special relativity and quantum mechanics, gives us
expressions for energy and momentum at a point—and
thereby for force—that depend only on the position of bodies
near that point. Even so−called long−range electric and
gravitational forces (actually 1/r2 —still falling rapidly with
distance) reflect the special properties of locally coupled gauge
fields and their associated covariant derivatives.

Similarly, the absence of significant multibody forces is

connected to the fact that sensible (renormalizable) quantum
field theories can't support them.

In this column I've stressed, and maybe strained, the

relationship between the culture of force and modern
fundamentals. In the final column of this series, I'll discuss its
importance both as a continuing, expanding endeavor and as
a philosophical model.

Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of

Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge.

© 2004 American Institute of Physics

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